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And so, at last, to the Lodge! "La Selva" means "the jungle", so the name is a bit contorted. And that's the only criticism I have to make. It's everything their literature claims! We arrived in the early afternoon, walked along the board walk for about 15 minutes (luggage carried for us), and then got into the small paddle canoe for the 15 minute trip across Garzacocha ("heron lake") to the Lodge itself. This separation of the Lodge from the river adds to its tranquillity. The Rio Napo is fairly heavily trafficked with motorised boats, and we were sufficiently far away not to hear the sounds. Sasha Lodge, a few km upstream, seems to be closer to the river. But I won't pass judgement on them for that. After a welcome cocktail and snack and getting fitted out with rubber boots, we then unpacked and returned to the bar to meet our guide and go out on our first trip (we first had time to wander a few hundred metres down a trail past the butterfly farm, and didn't recognise any of the few birds we heard!). We were extremely fortunate to have the exclusive service of La Selva's top bird guide, a Quichua Indian, José Hualinga.
José has guided some of the leading birding visitors to La Selva, and we must have seemed to him (well, we are!) very inexperienced compared with some of the people he has guided. But José proved to be very patient with us, doing his best to get us onto the birds that he found with his experience and very sharp eyes.
Just a few notes about La Selva before returning to the birds. The cabins are comfortable, with window screens and good mosquito nets over the beds; we had no use for our own. The food is excellent. Breakfast is whatever time you want (we ate at 5.30 am each morning), lunch (unless you have a boxed lunch with you, which is very good), is at 1 pm, and dinner is at 7 pm. The bar is well-stocked, the wine reasonably priced, and all the staff are extremely helpful and friendly (hats off to the manager, Pedro, and the excellent barman, Pepé!). OK, that's enough praise for La Selva. On to the birding. As in other parts of this diary, I'm splitting the account into habitats, rather than days. It seems to make sense to divide it in this way:
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Amazon
Basin Diary
I
had, prior to our visit, exchanged many emails with La Selva's delightful
and enthusiastic 'Sales Representative', Juana Marañón.
Her job description is a little misleading, because she basically
handles most of the office side for La Selva's Quito office. More
than that, we were fortunate enough to meet her at La Selva (and
exchanged big hugs!), because her multilingual talents meant that
she was acting as a translator for a 30-strong party of retired
French school teachers. It was Juana, who, learning that our prime
interest was birds (she insisted that we describe ourselves as 'hard
core birders'!) who managed to get José Hualinga allocated
exclusively to us during our stay - and I had expected that we would
be escorted round in a group of 6 - 8 people. Thanks, Juana! And
another hug for you!
He
was also very professional in his approach and his command of the
English language includes all the English bird names and appropriate
location vocabulary ("that branch, there", "through
the gap", etc). He was well equipped with a pair of 8 x 30
Swarovski bins (much lighter than my 10 x 42 Swarovski), a cassette
player (he used the tape we had "Birds of La Selva", on
whose sleeve he appears on the credits!) and the new tool of professional
bird guides, a red laser pointer, to show the dim-witted clients
on which branch the bird is sitting. This was very necessary for
us, and it works well in the dim light of the forest.
